


The Tao of Sam and Dean

by Zanne



Series: Tao & Zen [1]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, Wincest (implied/non-graphic)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-05
Updated: 2011-06-05
Packaged: 2017-10-19 22:03:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/205694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zanne/pseuds/Zanne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What do you hold onto when everything else is taken away? </p>
            </blockquote>





	The Tao of Sam and Dean

**Author's Note:**

> Once more, my many thanks go to [](http://tigriswolf.livejournal.com/profile)[ **tigriswolf**](http://tigriswolf.livejournal.com/)  who is not afraid of the Wincest. Let me assure you all that there is absolutely no Weecest in this piece - all of the non-graphic Wincest takes place after John's passing. I wanted to take a brief peek at how things might have gone if the boys had been more...psychologically damaged than they appeared from the brief bits we saw of them as children. Kripke owns them all, tag-nabbit. (Originally posted: 5/8/07)

  
For Sam, there had always been a Dean. Even before he knew what a Dean was, there was always that warm weight in his crib and the slightly stale breath brushing over his cheeks. Sam’s first memory was a blurry image of a freckled nose - that softly out-of-focus might-be dream that haunted his earliest memories of childhood. He may not have been able to count, or to even realize there existed a way to number those brown dots, but it seemed just the right amount to Sam – not too many, not too few…just enough for a Dean.

For Sam, sleep had always meant the safety and comfort of a Dean. Sleep eluded him without the steady _thub-dub thub-dub_ of a Dean sleeping next to him, Sam’s pudgy cheek pressed against whatever patch of available skin was nearest that soothing sound. When he woke up in the middle of the night, scared and lonely in the dark that smelled strangely of smoke and ashes in that first second after waking, he’d push in closer to his Dean, safe in the curve of his brother’s larger body around his – his tiny little haven carved out of Dean.

When, all too often, they were stuck with too thin blankets in a motel room where they could see the mist of their breath in the bright light of the neon flashing through the window, Sam would burrow further into the warmth of his Dean, pulling his Dean around him, a much needed blanket forestalling the tremors that wracked his small frame. At the other end of the year, when the heat was so smothering every breath was a struggle, like breathing through damp cloth, even then he couldn’t sleep without the familiar length of heat along his hip, that indelible mark of his Dean burning away in the night - a beacon blazing beside him to serve as his guide should the darkness ever take him.

When Sam was eight, his Dean was taken away – not far, about three feet from the fold away bed that was designated as Sam’s at every new motel, unless he was injured or sick or until he got too tall to be held comfortably on such a small piece of equipment. Then it was taking turns on the floor, just a touch further away from the steady puffs of breath that let him know his Dean was still close by, close enough to crawl next to should he need to - not that he would dare, not anymore – not even if both he and Dean slept better beside each other.

See, just as Sam had a Dean, Dean had a Sam. Even though Dean vaguely remembered there once was a world without a Sam, the world only really came into perfect focus after Sam came. Sam gave him a purpose – Sam made him something more than just Dean, Sam made him whole …a big brother, an idol, a God to something small and ineffectual. Dean was here because Sam needed him, so if there were no Sam, there would be no need for a Dean. These were thoughts that kept Dean up nights when he was younger, listening to the hummingbird heartbeat that was his little brother’s, cocooning that tiny body with his own to keep it safe and warm. Having a Sam was a lot of responsibility, but Dean couldn’t imagine things any other way.

Their names did nothing to delineate them in their own minds – where others heard the soft, slick susurration of _Ssssam_ and the hard, defined _D_ of _Dean_ , all Sam and Dean heard was the absolute certainty of _meyouus_ , an indefinable melding of pronouns that all led to the same conclusion. Neither one of them could explain it – how could they possibly clarify something so instinctive? Because there was a Sam there was a Dean, and because there was a Dean there was a Sam – two sides of the same coin, the yin and yang, a modern-day Janus. Dean was the extroverted Sam. Sam was the introverted Dean. If one was the other, was there really any difference?

Soon enough, they realized that _others_ saw a difference. The others were wrong, of course, but when even Pastor Jim suggested to John that his boys were unhealthily absorbed in each other - that they seemed unable to differentiate between themselves in a way that bordered on pathological - the Dean that was Sam and the Sam that was Dean held a silent conversation consisting of nothing more than the flick of an eyelid and the brush of pudgy fingers across the back of a hand, debating the issue until they reached an unwelcome conclusion.

While they knew that Sam was Dean and Dean was Sam, others were not so enlightened. Others had to go through life existing in the terrifying loneliness of merely _I_ , not the enveloping comfort of _meyouus_ – that purifying baptism of brotherly breath and the sanctity of a sibling’s touch that blessed the Sam that was Dean and the Dean that was Sam for as long as either of them cared to remember. While those unlucky enough to live outside the shelter of the _meyouus_ that defined their existence deserved their pity, they understood those on the outside could intervene, separating the Sam that was Dean from the Dean that was Sam. Somehow they knew this, and they knew it was _wrong_. However, they were children, all too aware of the lack of control they had over anything but each other in this world they lived in – a world where the supposedly never-ending constants of mother and father became as inconstant as the time of day.

So the Sam that was Dean and the Dean that was Sam took a step back and became just Sam and Dean, two half-things that to all outside eyes appeared a closer approximation to what was deemed _ordinary_ , though ordinary was really never a word that seemed to fit.

Even years later, the brothers that had once been the Sam that was Dean and the Dean that was Sam subconsciously remembered a time when they had been more than just Sam and Dean; they intuitively remembered a time when _meyouus_ was as sure as their next heartbeat, when every breath was savored for the scent of their other half that was only a hand-span away.

They sought that sanctuary in the only way they had available, trying to bind themselves in the physical world that had taken the warmth of the _meyouus_ and left them in the horrible emptiness of just Sam and Dean. There was only one avenue left, and they hadn’t ever intended to take it – hadn’t ever _needed_ to - but the quest for the piece that was missing led to its inevitable conclusion.

Sam had once known Dean’s touch as well as his own. When Sam had awakened, he was never sure if he were touching Dean or Dean were touching him - all that grounded him was that familiar sensation of skin on skin. Now it felt like the time before - that vague memory of being something _more_ , something complete - and his fingers would dig in deeper to the curve of his brother’s hip in a vain attempt to hold onto that feeling, as if the mere strength of his grip could keep that ephemeral sensation from slipping away. Dean’s palm on Sam’s chest made the _meyouus_ that lay buried somewhere deep - where even Sam couldn’t find it anymore – stir and stretch lazily like a sun-warmed cat. The innocent purity of _meyouus_ adapted in the only way it could to suit the situation of two grown men separated from their younger incarnations by the miles of years and years of miles, clothed in older desires and heavy with the scent of undiluted need.

With the silken brush of a mouth on the thin skin thrumming over a pulse point, with the drag of blunt fingernails along a lightly muscled ribcage, the _meyouus_ clawed its way further up and out, molding and evolving into what it needed to survive. It enveloped them in its surety, the warm familiar weight of it wrapping them in its soothing cotton quiet. For those few moments, when blood hummed with the demanding need for the taste of the sweat on the nape of a neck, the desire to dig teeth into the smooth skin of a shoulder, the culmination marked with the hot spill of shared lust on faintly scarred skin, the _meyouus_ grew complacent – far too sure of its own invulnerability - relaxing into the deluding comfort of the Sam that was Dean and the Dean that was Sam that it had been born of.

And with the separation of passion-flushed skin, the slowing of breaths and the encroaching barrenness of sleep or the bluntness of sunrise, the _meyouus_ lost ground, crushed under the overwhelming weight of _ordinary_ that had defeated it in the first place. And the Sam that was Dean and the Dean that was Sam became just Sam and Dean once more, the half-things that others demanded walk the world without the other.

  
 


End file.
